Resource Harvest Event is Sweet! (3)
As if that weren't enough, those deranged space monstrosities even tried to hijack a few of the assault shuttles we'd deployed and fly them straight back to the base — simple event or not.
"C-Commander! Those UMAs — Unidentified Mysterious Animals — have seized our assault shuttles and are heading this way!"
Of course, no matter what stunt they pulled…
"That so? Tiamat."
"Yes, Commander!"
"You see the designated assault shuttles coming back to base right now?"
"Yes — shall I shoot them all down?"
"Yeah."
It wasn't as if an entire fleet had gone out there. The monstrosities that had stolen someone else's shuttles and tried to ram them into us were… well. Tiamat's carrier craft squadrons swept in and gave them a light massage, reducing every last one to cosmic dust.
Whether they did or didn't hardly mattered. Once the first wave ended in such spectacular failure, Jessica began reporting on the next force we could commit.
"Commander, the assault infantry has been driven back. Shall we try deploying the chimeras next?"
I shook my head at that, then pointed toward the ones who'd come up to the command center to gawk at the Ghost Ship and were currently deep in girl talk.
"Do we really need to go through the stages? Just throw in the superhumans and the rest of the forces all at once."
"Hmm."
Why had we sent the assault troops in first, anyway? Because we had daily quests and weekly quests to knock out, and grinding our superhumans into paste just to farm easy rewards was something we'd rather avoid. If that wasn't going to work, there was no point dragging out a long extermination campaign with regular troops alone.
Once my decision was made, every superhuman on the base except Tiamat and Rain — neither of whom had any close-combat capability to speak of — went in, followed by the assault troops and chimeras sent to mop up the spoils of victory…
Exactly four hours, thirty-two minutes, and eighteen seconds later.
Details:
The unidentified monstrosities nesting inside the Ghost Ship have been mercilessly torn apart by the superhumans and forces you deployed, and every last nest has been burned to ash.
Of course, given their sheer numbers, a handful of the creatures did manage to survive…
But the only future left for those survivors is the cheerful, delightful biological experimentation of Griyanaar and her fellow mad scientists.
Rewards:
• Ghost Ship designation changed! (Ghost Ship ⇒ Ultra-Ancient Wreck)
• Interior map data of the Ultra-Ancient Wreck acquired; minimap information provided
• With all monstrosities inside the Ultra-Ancient Wreck suppressed, no Raid Events will trigger while surveying resources and secrets
Staring at the "Suppression Complete" event message floating before my eyes, I figured I could spend the remaining six days surveying at a nice, leisurely pace — survey, survey, and survey some more.
But right in the middle of that thought, one particular detail jumped out at me.
Raid Event? What was that again?
Curious what that even meant, I went to check the Gallery Wiki tab — the place I always end up leaning on for this kind of thing — only to find…
> Search Query: "Raid Event"
> Results Found: 1,561,844
Oh, for fuck's sake.
Trying other keywords didn't help either — there was just too much material. Left with no other option, I decided to post a verification shot on the Gallery and ask what the hell this thing even was.
???
But the moment I posted the question, the answers I actually wanted never came — just a pile of people roasting me for putting on a veteran circus act.
Is this why I posted a question? I feel pathetic and miserable.
To soothe that particular brand of sorrow, I started deleting comments and blocking anyone who crossed the line, staging a little protest until a proper answer finally showed up.
After I chopped a few heads, the answer I'd been looking for finally popped up.
[Verification shot of the Ultra-Ancient Exploration Ship]
That's it, nothing else.
Basically, exploring that thing is supposed to work like the previous Ancient Empire Heritage event — a timed instant dungeon you dive into and vacuum clean for loot.
And in this guy's case, that dungeon happens to have monsters in it.
Long story short:
Normally you're supposed to carefully survey the interior while tanking raids from those monsters. Once the thing's been discovered and a little time passes, the nests expand and enemy numbers start scaling exponentially.
But this guy just mindlessly steamrolled them at the start before the monsters could expand or do anything at all.
Plenty more comments piled up below that, but I'd already gotten the answer I needed, so I collapsed the thread and nodded to myself.
"Good. Very good."
"What's good, Commander?"
Jessica, who'd been hard at work ferrying materials from the Ultra-Ancient Wreck back to the base, looked over with a puzzled expression. I just shrugged at her question and changed the subject by asking how many resources were actually inside the wreck.
"By the way, Jessica — roughly how many salvageable resources are in that wreck?"
One of her rabbit ears flicked upright. She casually angled the tablet and hologram display she'd been looking at toward me and answered in her usual calm tone.
"Based on what's been found through the map data so far, we've discovered about fifty thousand units of minerals and three thousand units of rare resources."
"Hmm."
"Though it seems those resources only count as ours once they're brought inside the Astral Base — the base resource system isn't recognizing them yet."
"Is that how it works…"
I didn't know the details, but if Jessica said so, that was how it was. I nodded, then looked out through the command center window at the vast stretch of space beyond — at the colossal bulk of the Ultra-Ancient Wreck hanging out there. Assault shuttles and smaller craft were shuttling nonstop between the wreck and the base, hauling the resources loaded inside.
I called Jessica back just as she was about to return to her work and ordered Battlecruisers One and Two — currently docked with nothing better to do — to serve as temporary freighters running between the wreck and the base, so we could haul as much as possible in a single trip.
And as that user's reply from my earlier "negotiation" made clear, over the remaining six days while the Ultra-Ancient Wreck drifted on inertia toward wherever it was headed next, I wasn't going to run into any additional interesting events. So I spent the time checking that Jessica and the others were collecting resources and continuing to survey the interior for anything useful.
"Kieeeeek! Kieeeeek!!"
"What the hell is this thing saying?"
"Apparently it doesn't want to give birth to a monster's child?"